Is Your Applicant Tracking System Ruining the Candidate Experience?

image credit Discover Magazine

Are you making it difficult to attract and hire the best candidates by turning them off before they can even apply because of your archaic online application process (or lack of automation)? This is a common problem for employers who don’t use an applicant tracking system or worse, have a dated system that makes it difficult to apply for a job. Wait. Does the applicant experience really matter? Who cares how hard it is to apply? If the person really wants to work for you they will just deal with it right? No! For starters, if your process is arduous, the most valuable candidates will never get past “Go.” Secondly, your reputation as a company is at stake, and disgruntled job applicants can be fierce. Heard of Glassdoor? If not, it’s like the Yelp of employers. People go and write stuff their when they’re angry. So what’s ruining your applicant experience? Here are the three most common mistakes employers are making that ruin the candidate experience.

PROBLEM #1: REQUIRING APPLICANTS TO CREATE A USER NAME AND PASSWORD TO APPLY FOR A JOB
Requiring applicants to create a user name and password to apply for a job ruins the candidate experience. First, creating and another step in the application process is already risky especially when people are so fatigued with creating and remembering user names and passwords. Second, most employers don’t have the brand identity or employment brand that warrants the best applicants returning to update their profiles. We said it. Most often, the applicants that return and update their profiles with employers are rarely the applicants that employers want to hire. We said it again another way.

PROBLEM #2: YOUR ONLINE APPLICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPLETE
In addition to being super lengthy, your online application asks far too many unnecessary questions. Job applicants don’t want to spend hours completing a single application, and there are other job opportunities out there with much easier hiring processes. Save the nitty gritty details and long-winded questions for when the applicant reaches the interview process. Make sure your online application is easy to complete with all devices. i.e. tablets, smartphones, Macs, etc. And, make sure your applicant tracking system has the best parsing tools that auto-fill applications from data on applicants’ resumes. Go through the application as if you were a job applicant. Look for the annoyances. Fix them. Do this often.

PROBLEM #1: TREATING APPLICANTS LIKE NUMBERS
The main problem with some applicant tracking systems is that they try too hard to eliminate the human elements from the hiring process. While this is a measure to create efficiency, it can leave a bad taste in an applicant’s mouth. Job applicants want to be treated as valued individuals, which can be a tricky thing to do with an old ATS. At each stage of the application process from the first acknowledgement messages sent to applicants must be courteous, succinct, friendly and “stage-relevant”. Put some thought into your content. Treat each message like a marketing message. And, if your applicant tracking system does not have the ability to send stage-specific acknowledgement emails, it’s time for an upgrade.

READY TO IMPROVE THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE?
At Newton will build a thoughtful, applicant tracking system that improves the user experience for ALL of the PEOPLE that interact with our hiring software. Featuring easy to integrate careers pages with the most modern online applications available and smart, stage specific auto-responders, Newton gets it. Schedule a private web demo with one of our applicant tracking systems experts today.

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